The present invention relates to a female contact in a connector and a method of assembling the same. A high-density multicore connector is used in a computer and electronic equipment.
Male and female contacts are used in a connector. For example, a female contact 102 in a connector 101 as shown in FIG. 5 is flat and simple in structure, which is suitable to miniaturization and high density formation.
The contact 102 is punched in plate material such as copper alloy having low contact resistance and high elasticity, with a press. Two protrusions 105 and 105 are provided to form a forked contact portion 104 at the front end of a middle conductive body 103, and a slit 106 is provided between the two protrusions 105 and 105. The rear end thereof has a contact portion 107 connected to a printed circuit board or a cable core.
A connector 101 has a synthetic resin casing 108 in which there are provided conductive pieces 103 of a plurality of contacts 102 which are arranged in parallel. The front end of the casing 108 has a bore 109 which receives the contact protrusions 105, and the contact portion 107 projects rearwardly.
The numeral 110 denotes a connection which is provided on a printed circuit board, and the numeral 111 denotes a conductive contact terminal which is inserted in the slit 106.
The connection 110 engages with the bore 109 in the connector 101, thereby allowing the slit 106 to engage with the contact terminal 111. The contact terminal 111 is inserted between the protrusions 105 and 105 to spread out elastically, thereby becoming electrically conductive.
Recently, with miniaturization and high density formation of a connector, instead of standard terminal pitch of 0.1 inches (2.54 mm), the pitch of 0.05 inches (1.27 inches) as called "half-size" has been demanded; so it is necessary to decrease the contact in size to less than a half and in thickness "t".
But the elastically-bendable area of the forked contact portion 104 is small between the two protrusions 105 and 105; so it requires a large force to mount and remove the connector 101, which leads difficulty for safety mounting and removing. The adjustment in width "d" of the slit 106 or thickness of the connection 110 results in poor contact. So it is necessary to broaden elastically-bendable area by forming the length of the protrusion 105 or length "L" of the slit 106 as large as possible.
Further a plurality of parallel contacts 102 involve variation in height when the connector 101 is manufactured. To make the connection 110 bendable depending on the variation in height, it is necessary to reduce the thickness of the connection 110 of the printed circuit board as film or the width "d" of the slit 106.
However the elongated slit 106 leads difficulty in punching since narrower press is required to form the slit 106 when the contact 202 is punched with the press, thereby making miniaturization of the contact impossible.
The thickness of blade for punching the slit 106 has to be as large as the thickness "t" of processed plate material, and the width "d" of slit 106 smaller than the thickness "t" makes processing difficult.
Owing to high density formation in electronic equipement, less than hald-size terminal pitch has been required, but, to perform such high density formation, it is necessary to employ an extremely thin film substance as contact terminal having conductive foils on which circuits are printed and wired at one side. The thickness of the film substrate becomes smaller than the thickness "t" of the material for the contact 102, making it impossible to make the forked contact 102.